I hope it can be of use in the ongoing discussions about Native curricula.
The Education of Little Tree:
What It Really Reveals About the Public Schools
By Michael Marker
RECENT STORIES from the Associated Press, Newsweek, National Public Radio,
and other sources have made it clear that Forrest Carter, the author of
the very popular book *The Education of Little Tree*, was really Asa
Carter, an ex-Ku Klux Klansman. The book is supposed to be the "true
story" of Little Tree, an orphan who goes to live with his Cherokee
grandparents and learns a considerable amount about the "Indian Way." It
was number one on the New York Times nonfiction paperback bestseller list.
Revelations about Carter's background have caused literary
critics, librarians, and the general public to engage in a lively debate
over how to separate the genuine article from the counterfeit in the realm
of ethnic literature. It seems that readers can be easily deceived.
What is most troubling is how readily and enthusiastically this
book has been incorporated into public school curricula as a vehicle for
teaching about Indian culture. The question is not whether the book is
good literature; its popularity attests to its merit as a good story.
But being a good story is not enough for this book. It purports to be a
true story - a true story about Indian people. Teachers across the United
States have been using this book to expose their students to the lifestyle
and values of Native Americans. For this purpose, the book is a phony. An
examination of the setting in which a hoax is so unquestioningly accepted
reveals much about the problems to be overcome if genuine multicultural
reforms are ever actually to take hold with teachers and schools.
THE TERRAIN
The trouble with this book is that it is so generic. According to
Newsweek, "The book fairly brims with quaint mountain platitudes and
affectionate ethnic stereotypes: the sage Native Americans, the thrifty
Jew, the silly white folk."1 The Indian stuff is plugged into this story
in a completely superficial fashion. The scenes of patient grandparents
teaching the boy to read, the conflicts with a fairly two dimensional
government bureaucracy, and the saccharine displays of affection and
hillbilly honesty are the sort of images Carter serves up in this book.
These may be nice themes to go over with junior high students in a
conventional classroom, but the approach here is so broad and general that
the book could be about any number of "ethnic families. " To this extent
the book - perhaps not inadvertently - serves a fairly insidious design.
The message is perfectly clear:
Indians are no longer the continent's indigenous people, they are only one
of many colorful groups in the great American melting pot. Indians are
just like the rest of us. They like to hunt, make moonshine, gather wild
herbs in season, and have a close relationship with the earth. In short,
they are a lot like the hill people in the Tennessee mountains, with
Indian stuff added to their lives as a kind of cultural spice.
A Lummi elder told me why she didn't like the movie Dances with
Wolves very much. She said it was "instant pudding." Well, that is exactly
why public school teachers so gleefully used *The Education of Little Tree*
in their classrooms: they are used to serving up a steady academic diet of
"instant pudding." This is the fault not so much of the teachers as of a
system that has forced them to become docile servants of the socialization
needs of the state.
Since the Fifties and Sixties, the writing of prepackaged
curricula has become more and more the domain of the state. Former
curricula and ways of teaching were thought to be not powerful or
efficient enough. Teachers, mostly women, weren't considered sophisticated
enough. so a new set of "teacher-proof" curricula were developed. The new
teacher was to be a pedagogical and classroom-management technician who
would implement the materials but not necessarily reflect on their
content.
*The Education of Little Tree* seems made to order for this public
school environment. Not only is it easily digestible for an audience
brought up on television versions of Indian life, but it also steers away
from any troubling questions about the history of Native peoples with
regard to the existing social order.
Even if teachers knew where to find the people and materials that
could introduce their students to genuine and substantial aspects of
Indian culture, they couldn't present the information in the context of
their classrooms. The culture and ways of thinking of the First Nations
are in themselves too much a critique of the basic values and structure of
modern society. The ideas would be unintelligible and unacceptable to a
group of teachers charged with maintaining and justifying the multitude of
inequities in a class based society. Teachers must demonstrate at least a
modicum of support for the dominant economic principles, which demand that
there be an elite upper class and large numbers of lower-class students
who know and accept their place in society. Martin Carnoy is worth
quoting here: "Even today, with all our understanding of cultural
differences and an increasing sensitivity to cultural pluralism, schools
are preparing different social classes of students for different economic
and social roles."2
A detailed and thorough study of First Nations culture and history could
prove troubling not just for teachers and administrators but for students
as well. "One noted historian of Los Angeles stated in an official
document that there is a danger, if the historic truth is told, that the
white children in the schools will develop certain unhappy complexes of
insecurity."3 It is widely held that students arrive at school already
plagued by a whole clutch of neuroses; it would be cruel to subject them
to any more unpleasant truths than are absolutely necessary to get them
through the bland required material.
The Education of Little Tree has been so popular generally and so
frequently used in classrooms because it makes people feel good. If deeper
social analysis and cultural exploration are too troubling for the
schools, then this sort of escapist literature is the answer. For those
who want to believe that Indian people are pretty much just like
middle-class white people, except more quaint and wholesome in their
simple, romantic lives, this book serves well. It also works well for
those who want to promote the American cult of the "individual" making
his (or, less frequently, her) own way in the great melting-pot society.
Vine Deloria points out that one of the most universal and
unifying aspects of Indian culture today is the general feeling of
betrayal by and resentment toward white America, an avowedly Christian
nation.4 This central aspect of current Indian culture is unacceptable as
a focus for study in the public school setting because it requires
non-Native society to engage in a deep self-examination - and that it is
wholly unwilling to do.
Many people are left wondering how a former Klansman could write a
book as sensitive and charming as The Education of Little Tree. Perhaps
the move from Klansman to New Age guru is not as much of a shift as we
would like to think. Both roles offer the chance to provide simplistic
answers to troubling and intricate questions. Dan Carter, a professor of
history at Emory University, said it well: "In his lifetime, Forrest
Carter was able to move from Klan rabble-rouser to speech writer for
George Wallace's white backlash to successful author and screenwriter by
finding a voice in harmony with a changing America."5 The Education of
Little Tree shows Indian people in the way white middle-class society
wants to see them. The teachers thought it was the genuine article because
it worked for them within the context of their constrained environment. In
short, the book was believed because it was comfortable to believe it.
Teachers are encouraged to provide answers, but they are discouraged from
providing questions. This sort of incident is likely to recur as long as
the schools remain resistant to exploring the countercultural aspects of
First Nations culture.
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING ABOUT NATIONS PEOPLE
In the unlikely event that revelations about the author of this
popular book serve as a wake-up call to school administrators and
teachers, there are ways to bring legitimate Native Indian culture into
the classroom. First, invite tribal elders and create an informal setting
for them to speak to students. Second, ask members of the tribal council
if they or someone else from the tribe would come to the school to talk
about an issue that is of present concern to the tribe; students can be
involved in a discussion of the history surrounding the issue. Third,
teach a unit on treaties, in which you discuss the social, philosophical,
and economic effects. (There are ways of doing this even at the lower
elementary levels.) Fourth, try to offer Native viewpoints when discussing
modern social problems, such as the environmental crisis. Fifth, explore
Indian culture in a way that asks deep and probing questions about the
development of modern values and ways of doing things.
Sixth, avoid neat, packaged conclusions; instead, continue to suggest that
there is more than one way to approach the challenges that life presents.
Seventh, remember that generalizations about First Nations people are just
that: generalizations. Emphasize the incredible diversity in life patterns
and physical features exhibited by First Nations people prior to contact
with colonizers from Europe. Eighth, look for books that have been written
and endorsed by Native people. Ninth, don't portray the Indian as a victim
or, conversely, as a romanticized archetype. Both of these images are
stereotypes and discourage critical thinking. Again, look for potent
questions, not ready-made answers.
By taking First Nations people out of an encapsulated past in
which they have been objectified and idealized, we allow their views to be
examined in relation to the contemporary socioeconomic setting. The
insights of Indian people are neither irrelevant nor obsolete today.
Whether or not Forrest Carter had a change of heart from his Klansman days
before he wrote Education of Little Tree is somewhat beside the point.
Carter's nefarious past only serves to amplify the central questions: Will
the schools continue to deceive themselves and an unwitting public by
portraying Native cultures in simplistic ways that suit the socialization
needs of the state and that do not make teachers and administrators
uncomfortable? Or will they struggle to create a context in which genuine
cultural values can be examined and a discourse aimed at fostering real
democratic pluralism can be begun?
A continued diet of feel-good New Age pseudocultural pap will only
produce a generation of ethnocentric ignoramuses ill-prepared to deal with
the complexities of a bewildering modern world. It should be the
schools'job to expose, not to promote, the Forrest Carters of this world.
1. John Leland with Marc Peyser, "New Age Fable from an Old School Bigot?
The Murky History of the Best Selling Little Tree," Newsweek, 14 October
1991, p. 62.
2. Martin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New
York: David McKay, 1974), p. 146.
3. Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry,
Textbooks and the American Indian (San Francisco: Indian Historian Press,
1970), p. 22.
4. Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian
Manifesto (New York: Avon, 1969), p. 56.
5. Dan T. Carter, Transformation of a Klansman," New York Times, 4
October 1991, p.31.